On drilling rigs, in particular, offshore Jack-Up drilling rigs, drill pipe can be stored in tiered pipe stacks or racks behind stanchions known as “Samson posts” on the cantilever pipe deck. On typical offshore rigs, cranes are utilized to lift singles or bundles of pipe from the pipe racks to a catwalk on a pipe handler or up to the drill floor. This process requires people to work in and around these suspended loads to hook up bundles of pipe. This is a hazardous job where workers are prone to injury.
In the traditional way of kicking pipe out of the trough, a “kicker”, as shown in US Patent application 2006/0285941 is mounted into the trough and actuated through cut outs in the trough. The problem with this design is it creates a transition seam which when laying down pipe on to the trough the threaded end of the pipe, whether protected with a thread protector or not, will catch on. If the engagement of the pipe on this seam is firm enough it can the cause the pipe to bounce sideways relative to the trough. In an extreme situation the pipe is capable of bouncing sideways far enough to jump off the trough entirely and thus be free to fall to the ground or swing back towards the drill floor edge.
Also shown in the above cited US Patent application are manually adjusted pins utilized to aid in indexing a single pipe from a row of pipe on tilted pipe racks onto the catwalk. These pins must be manually positioned in a series of locations each corresponding to a different diameter of pipe. To adjust the pins, a worker is required to get onto the catwalk or walk between the catwalk and the pipe on the pipe racks. This is a situation that can put the worker in a dangerous position.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a pipe handler and a kicker/indexer that overcomes the shortcomings of prior art pipe-handling devices, and provides for the safe and efficient movement of pipe on a drilling rig.